FERNS. 41 



many years the only locality in which my relative, the forked 

 spleenwort (rarest of British ferns) had found a resting- 

 place. Since then, botanists report that the same fern 

 has been found in Carnarvonshire ; subsequently, in great 

 profusion on a wall by the road-side, leading from Llanrwst 

 towards Conway. 



But not on walls only, ruins, and wild rocks, beside 

 public ways, or mantling extensive moors, do ferns congre- 

 gate. The sea spleenwort finds a home in the crannies of 

 sea-cliffs, or in the gloomy recesses of marine caverns ; their 

 rough and quarried roofs being often mantled by its aid with 

 a luxuriant vegetation. Nor less profuse of growth is the 

 sea spleenwort on the heights of Teneriffe and Madeira; 

 and the searcher after ferns may find this species rooted on 

 a way-side rock, beneath the Turk mountain, that flings 

 its dark shadow over the road from Killarney towards 

 Kenmare. 



Why is it, Stranger, that while the common polypody 

 hangs in bright yellow-dotted tufts on cottage roofs, or 



